Ahmadinejad Returns

September 13, 2008

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is coming to town again. This visit to New
York, as last year's and the one the year before, is on the occasion of
the annual convening of the United Nations General Assembly, to which
meetings many heads-of-state come with enormous entourages eager to get
out of their own countries. New York is a
special treat for the high politicians of poor countries. They can
shop, screw up traffic, eat in the international style at enormous
expense. It is also big business for the luxury hotels and the
limousine services. Only God knows what percentage of their gross
national products goes to waste in the big city. How much less these
sessions would cost if they were held, say, (to take three at random)
in Barmako or Bangui or Banjil, let alone how much would be added to
the local economies. But, then, there is the risk that no one would
come at all. What kind of party could one have in Barmako? Would the
press even come? I doubt it. Actually, I believe that were
headquarters of the U.N. not to be in New York (or perhaps London or
Paris) the whole portentous edifice would collapse.

But
Ahmadinejad has a real political purpose in coming. He can humiliate
the United States and some of its prestigious institutions. Two years
ago he had members of the Council on Foreign Relations (either big
givers or men and women who used to have high profiles) eating out of
his hand, including many Jews who came out of the meeting telling their
friends they had told him a thing or two. Last year, he made a fool
out of Lee Bollinger) right there at a public
assembly on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University.

Some
of this year's prey have already signed up for a feast. The Mennonite
Church has invited Ahmadinejad to dinner on September 25, a A'jad has
accepted. Other religious bodies organizing the dinner are the World
Council of Churches, Religions for Peace (as opposed to that other
organization, Religions for War) and the American Friends Service
Committee, the Quakers. Other communions are expected to send
representatives, as well. The group had already met with the Iranian
president on his last visit to the U.N. That session was held in a
chapel at U.N. headquarters. Presumably, their discussion was very
spiritual. Or did he perhaps talk about the Holocaust and how Israel
should be annihilated? By the way, how do the Quakers deal with this
kind of threat? Do they elder him?

In the
meantime, on Friday, according to Ha'aretz, Ahmadinejad told Hamas leader Ismail Haniyah that Iran would
stand behind the Palestinian nation "until the big victory feast which
is the collapse of the Zionist regime." Perhaps we can think of his
meal with the collection of sanctimonious religious groups as the forshpeis.